Get Hurt Trying

I've been struggling the past week.  We've had kittens die from recalled Iams food.  How can you console a loving foster parent that she inadvertently gave cat food that killed 3 of her kittens?   We can go into the legal ramifications of the company that poisoned the cats...yada....yada...yada.  There were no vet bills to be reimbursed.  The kittens vomited once and died within 20 minutes.  No other symptoms.  I don't want to talk about food recalls in this post.  I'm just too pissed to have an intelligent conversation about it.  

I'm sure I'll hear from lots of caring rescuers asking if it was Distemper....blah blah blah...no, it wasn't.  It was the food...on a recalled cat food list that came out yesterday.

Last night, I offered to help a black kitten that was found in a ravine.  He is about 8 weeks old, starving, dehydrated, etc.  I picked him up this morning (from a friend of the finder) and found that he was almost dead.  The fleas were jumping off his tiny body and his gums were white with anemia and dehydration.  He was  starting to have seizures as I quickly wrapped his tiny body in the towel and jumped in my car.

I don't remember driving to the vets.  I remember being flipped off by another car and almost running over a Mom and child in the crosswalk as I sailed through far too quickly.  The vet wanted to euthanize the little guy, but I really wanted to TRY.  That's all I wanted....just to TRY.  Damnit, he survived in the wild and he deserved for a rescue to try to save his life.  The managed to get an IV into his dehydrated vein, and treated him for hundreds of fleas that were slowly killing him. As I type this blog post, he's still alive.

All we can do is try, right?  Both of the people that I'm talking about - our wonderful foster Mom and the woman that kept the black kitten last night TRIED.  I get sick of hearing people whining about "Ooo, I could never foster, because I'd get too attached."  Well...shit.  Get hurt TRYING.